Crush it!
The last half mile. As a designer, I can’t help myself. I was going to write a little takedown on the invisible loudness of lorry and van advertising — you know the type. Stand on any street corner for ten minutes, watch the traffic go by, and then try to recall a single standout message or design once you’re back at your desk.
You can’t. Because it all blurs into a noisy, forgettable blur.
It’s a bit like trying to recall one specific ad campaign after stepping off the tube in the morning or finishing a show on ITV the night before. Good luck.
But I changed my mind.Instead, I want to celebrate this crazy, quirky, colourful and more often than not D.I.Y moving chaos.
Especially as we live in the age of homogeneity, where everything looks and sounds the same: from the design of wind tunnel aerodynamic cars to toothpaste packaging, and dare I say it, graphic two-tone palette campaigns that seem all the rage at the moment and of course, the AI horse has bolted.
Last year, £42.6 billion was spent in the UK on advertising across multiple channels, a big chunk of which went completely unnoticed, wasted through poor cut-through and sameness.
I don’t know the specific spend on van livery, but I do know this: it’s a glorious, mobile gallery of individuality.
Even if you can’t remember most, there are real gems out there if you bother to look: The little men on the orange London Linen lorry. The tagline on those mega Tesco trucks. And some cracking typography, if you’re a type nerd (and you should be).
Life would be so much more boring standing at a bus stop if every van were the same colour.
As Oscar Wilde once said, ‘Be yourself, everyone else is taken’, and that is my theory on branding – stand out, have an opinion, be memorable, have a reason for being, make people feel something, and please never be ordinary – CRUSH IT.
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